... Technology,
Profit, and the Friendly User at the Cutting Edge

A new age does not begin
all of a sudden.
My grandfather was already living in the new age
My grandson will probably still be living in the old one.

The new meat is eaten with the old forks.

It was not the first cars
Nor the tanks
It was not the airplanes over our roofs
Nor the bombers.

From new transmitters came the old stupidities.
Wisdom was passed on from mouth to mouth. 1

-Bertolt
Brecht

Cover
of a Nimslo promotional brochure

In the spring of 1982 Nimslo Corporation
of Atlanta released a new camera into the test market of southern Florida. Originally
priced at $250, flash extra, this 35mm automatic camera embodied several unique
features. Although utilizing normal 35mm colorprint film, it exposed four vertical
negatives simultaneously through four lenses arrayed horizontally across the
face of this otherwise innocuous looking camera. Film exposed in the camera
can be mailed to the Nimslo labs in Georgia where a 36-exposure roll usually
yields 18 3 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch borderless lenticular stereoscopic prints (similar
to three-dimensional novelty postcards) at approximately $1.00 per print (including
postage, film, and "handling"; 8x10's are now available at approximately $17.00
each.)2 Following an intensive advertising campaign on network television
("Behold The Miracle!"), distribution of the camera is now nationwide, the retail
price: $199, with a competitive New York City rate of approximately $80.00 per
unit (in December 1983). Originally fabricated by Timex in Dundee, Scotland,
current models (same design) are now contracted from Ricoh and Sunpak in Japan.3

As the first stereo camera to go
into production in almost three decades, the Nimslo 3-D also represents the
first appearance of lenticular stereo technology on the consumer market. This
instance provokes reflections on similar en- trances of innovative technology,
marketing strategies, and subsequent integration into photographic practice.
The history of such relationships dates from the earliest inventions in photography
and has profoundly affected the options available to photographers, which then
ultimately colors all aspects of photography.

For refreshment, let's sip through
a few vintages of the past. In the beginning, though the daguerreotype and the
calotype were roughly simultaneous inventions, William Henry Fox Talbots's proprietary
restraints on access to his process hindered its utility. Acquisition of Louis
Jacques Mande Daguerre's rights by the French government quickly placed his
new tool in the public domain-at least in France. Although a unique object (i.e.,
non-replicable), fragile, and difficult to view as mirrored glass plates, the
daguerrotype functioned as the standard well into the 1850s. No other permanent,
reliable, or affordable systems were available. Photography opened with a polished,
reflective silver gambit-precious, singular, and crafted. Photography's potential
as flexible, reproductive technology, capable of cheaply reaping mass amounts
of information, remained latent, in the grasp of a jealous petty aristocrat
.4

Nevertheless, photographic practice
quickly proliferated- almost everywhere. An unfortunate side-effect of the Talbot-
Daguerre rivalry penalized British photography for a decade and a half. Daguerre
had advantageously patented his invention in England and licensed it to Antoine
Claudet, and later, Richard Beard. Secure in the belief that his process was
superior, Fox Talbot likewise licensed a few studios to demonstrate the fact.
In either case, fees for sublicenses were so exorbitant and infringement so
aggressively prosecuted, that few photographers were able to maintain businesses,
charging fees marked up from the high costs imposed by expensive franchises.
North of the border, unbridled by patents, Scottish photography flourished;
the monumental work of pioneers like David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson
was built on this statutory exception.5 Details of the French process had been
quickly transmitted to the United States by late summer 1839, and the practice
spread rapidly, unregulated. Similar growth occurred in most of the industrialized
world. England, bastion of capital, enterprise, development, and protectionist
laws was thus surrounded by explosive growth while its own photographic industry
was hobbled by defeatist, embargoed "ownership." This condition persisted until
new processes or nuances were perfected (and successfully defended in court)
or the original patents expired. The legal mechanisms defining invention as
property exist to the present as basic tenets of tree enterprise.

History also provides contrasting
examples where pivotal innovation was quickly and smoothly integrated with exponential
results. In 1859 and again in 1861, the popular essayist, Oliver Wendell Holmes,
published several articles promoting stereo photography in the Atlantic Monthly.
An important outcome of his interest was Holmes's own design for an improved
version of the Brewster stereo viewer. This design was fabricated and sold by
the Boston firm of Joseph L. Bates. Neither Holmes nor Bates patented the design,
apparently intending it for the public domain .6 Not only was this new viewer
lighter, brighter, and adjustable, but it was inexpensive to build and easily
mass produced. Buoyed to no small degree by the availability of these cheap,
standardized stereopticons, the industry exploded. Relatively compact, fast,
and easy to use cameras produced small negatives which could be safely transported
in large batches. In turn, these plates were easily solar contact-printed, providing
miniature, but exquisite vistas which filled the entire field of vision when
viewed in the magnifying instruments. Predating offset reproduction by 30 years,
mid-century stereo photography became the prototype for today's mass media.
To wit, armies of photographers--as well as missionaries, soldiers, merchants,
functionaries of new European empires, wealthy travelers and explorers, and
others-fed hundreds of factories millions of images which were then distributed,
mostly door-to-door, by thousands of traveling salesmen, to fill collections
in the parlors of virtually every family in America (with a parlor). With its
comprehensive range of foreign vistas, exotic cultures, historic sites, disasters,
battles, expositions, shrines, "homilies, and burlesques accessible at once
to thousands of remote spectators, the stereopticon provided photography with
its first manifestation as significant popular visual communication.

Suckled by the increasing ubiquity
of photographica, this public yearned for greater opportunity to gain access
to the means of production for making their own images. Although many solutions
were possible (significantly, including education), successful competition and
manipulations of the market through publicity, prosecution, and aggressive centralization
of power (buying out or destroying rivals) spawned a history with the tight
tautological linearity of Darwinist evolution. The story is well known; the
alternatives are forgotten.

George Eastman's legendary development
of gelatin film and his subsequent success with the Kodak is generally credited
as the final link in the democratization of photography. This put an affordable,
100-shot camera within reach of vast numbers of the population formerly restricted
from participation in photography for economic reasons, and by lack of technical
skills, access, or literacy. Eastman also erected the foundations of an empire.

Myth aside, there are ambivalent
factors in Eastman's and subsequent "user friendly" designs. These are well
described by Su Braden in her recent book, Committing Photography:

In his 1888 marketing
campaign to promote his first simplified mass-produced camera and the idea
of the "family snap," Eastman had suggested that a "collection of these pictures
could be made to furnish a pictorial history of life as it is lived by the
owner, that will grow more valuable every day that passes." Life as it was
being lived by working class people in the 1880's was very tough, but the
design of Eastman's camera did not make it possible for them to photograph
crucial elements of their histories such as working conditions in the factories
or the insides of their homes.

... The value that Eastman
had in mind was not the valuable role that the documentation of the lives
of working people could play in their understanding of their own social conditions
and in their efforts to change society. He was thinking of the value in nostalgia
which had the opposite effect--helping people to accept the world as it was--to
recelebrate the high spots and to convince themselves that their lives were
all sunny scenes. Photography, as it is generally understood, taking pictures
on the simplest equipment and having enprints made for family use, has been
created by simplification rather than education. The simplification has been
achieved by restricting the amount of control the photographer has over equipment
and processing. With electronic flash built into the cheapest cameras, people
can now photograph the insides of their homes ... such access to the production
of photographs is only token if isolated from the questions about how the
photographs can be published, used, and seen.7

Contemporary "innovations" such as
the Pocket lnstamatic, the Disc Camera, with tiny, grainy negatives, and the
monoprint format Polaroid SX-70, with their exclusive color print "convenience,"
maintain this tradition. Nimslo's total system is merely the extreme-a reversion
to the original form of the Eastman Doctrine-One Camera, One Laboratory, One
Company, My Business, Under God.

Left: ad from Cosmopolitan.
Right: ad from American Photography. DETAIL

Roughly contemporaneous with the
early Kodak, other so-called democratic forms were born. The development of
cinema provided a technology ideally suited not only to mass presentation, but
was affordable, portable, and replicable. Built upon the work of many, including
Marey, Muybridge, Eastman, Lumiere, and Edison, motion picture technology has
a complex geneology, resistant to proprietal claims. Yet early film history
abounds with patents, caveats, franchises, and lawsuits. Edison's efforts to
dominate and control manufacturing, marketing, processing, production, and distribution
contributed to the tawdry quality and limited quantity of early U.S. film and
provide an explanation for the difference between domestic and European products
of the period. The stranglehold of Edison and the Motion Pictures Patents Company
cartel was not broken until a long series of suits, alternative structures (with
significantly better products), and European imports (equipment as well as films)
undermined and gradually dismantled the trust in the first decades of this century.
Energetic prosecution and grotesque profits had briefly (from 1908 to 1918)
provided the cartel with the power to intimidate all visible (i.e., quality)
independent production and exhibition within legal, or not so legal, reach.
Film legend credits this monopoly with the inadvertent location of the nation's
film capital in southern California; "outlaw" filmmakers sought sanctuary in
this remote region, close to the border and out of sight, to escape the goons
and subpoenas dispatched from the New York offices of the conglomerate.8

These tendencies towards control
persist today in conflicts between public access and corporate domination of
network and cable/satellite broadcasting, and the interminable infringement
battles over television/movie copyright threatened by the proliferation of consumer
video hardware and distribution of blank and pre-recorded magnetic tapes.

*

Photography is a modern art form,
determined as a function of technology, economics, and forms of social organization.
It is as much a product of capitalism, entrepreneurial marketing, and broadened
literacy as it is an integrated application of chemistry and physics. It fuels
and flows from large-scale industries; its history exhibits increasing reciprocal
dependence on production for mass markets as mass culture displays an increasing
dependency on photo-derived iconography (often at the expense of in-depth literacy).
The stakes get higher; the pace quickens. Somewhere in this maelstrom, individual
people make pictures with cameras, film, paper, and chemistry manufactured by
very large corporations with interests often very different from those of their
clientele.

The meteoric rise of Nimslo Corporation
(the wholly owned subsidiary of Nimslo International, Ltd.) exemplifies certain
dynamics which would normally be masked through the long growth curve of organizations
like Kodak and Polaroid. Nimslo makes one product, provides one service, and
has done so for less than three years. Other comparable examples of large-scale,
ingenue industry can be found in the computer realm, where the instant success
and instant demise of Osborne Computer Corporation serve as a study in contemporary
tech no-lifecycle pathology (as in post-mortem).

Osborne Corp.'s failure stemmed from
their inability to maintain dominance in a field which they initiated. Previously
a professional evaluator of trends and products in the computer industry, Adam
Osborne conceived and developed a uniquely integrated system--microprocessor,
disk drive, monitor, keyboard--all contained within a single, portable case.
Although a new idea, it was hardly patentable, and other manufacturers were
quick to offer systems which competed well. Osborne Corp., slow to respond,
was undiversified, overextended, and poorly managed. The company became a dinosaur
within two years, going bankrupt in the fall of 1983. Diversified firms like
Atari and Texas Instruments survived similar disasters largely because they
could absorb amputation trauma.9

In some respects Nimslo's prehistory
is similar. The company was founded by astute engineer-designers, Jerry Nims
and Allen Lo, former employees of the giant Japanese conglomerate Asahi, the
world's leading manufacturer of 3-D postcards. They perceived the possibility
of extending the difficult technology of lenticular stereography into the popular
market by simplifying, standardizing, and producing quantities sufficient to
make costs affordable. Culminating a 12-year effort, the project was financed
with large-scale venture capital--$47-million, most of which came from the Fred
Olsen Group, the Norwegian owners of Timex--and a comprehensive camera-to-print
system was developed.10 Unlike Osborne, however, key elements of the Nimslo
system are patentable, proprietary, and relatively difficult to replicate anyway.
Thus Nimslo stands, as of this moment, as a neat monopoly; the only aspects
of their system outside of their control are choices of colorprint film and
batteries.

Just what is the nature of this miraculous
system? The Nimslo 3-D is a fixed focus, automatic exposure "point and shoot"
camera--a normal 35mm snapshot camera designed with complete meter control for
simple operation. Its 30mm f5.6 lens provides "normal" coverage across the vertical
half-frame format. Time exposure, multiple exposure, interchangeable lenses,
focus, and diaphragm control are not options. For $80.00 Nimslo offers a small
two-headed flash (adjustable bounce and direct) with hot-shoe-mount electrical
contacts dedicated to the system. The camera contains no other photo-flash terminals,
making it difficult to attach more powerful or flexible strobes. A more professional
six-lens camera is rumored but very little concrete information has been published."

The heart of the system is the lenticular
print,"...a three dimensional snapshot which can be seen without special glasses
or viewers."12 Prints are produced by laminating a screen formed of tiny cylindrical
lenses onto photographic emulsion and processing them with a special multi-lens
printer. Like the daguerreotype, the lenticular print is an exquisite, engaging,
intimate object. Similarly, it is small, reactive to light and viewing angle,
demanding close proximity. It also is relatively delicate-easily scratched and
marred by fingerprints. Finally, this system restores a sense of mystery, the
"magic" of photography: film exposed in their camera must be mailed to Nimslo
Corp. for special photofinishing in highly secret computerized machines; no
alternate services exist. And this processing is very limited indeed. Although
set up to handle C-41 negative development, Nimslo refuses to develop Ilford
XP-1 or similar black and white chromogenic emulsions, confining their services
to color, and therefore the prints to fugitive permanence.

How
Nimslo 3-D print system works: Four lens Nimslo camera makes six stereo
pairs at once by producing four half-frame pictures on regular 35mm negative
color film. Once processed, the four negative images are projected by an
enlarging photofinishing machine onto a material consisting of an emulsion
layer and opaque backing lenticular-faced plastic sheeting. The print containing
the 3-D picture that is thus produced is then processed much like any color
print, dried and viewed. (Actually prints are processed in huge rolls and
cut apart at the end.)

Thus streamlined, handling similar
material exclusively exposed in identical automatic cameras, consistent high-quality
output should be easily established and maintained. However, based upon approximately
50 rolls of film submitted by myself and colleagues since November 1982, I find
Nimsio's average print quality to be mediocre, comparable to that produced by
one-hour labs in most cities. Occasionally spectacular results are followed
by orders flawed by bad color correction, poor contrast, generous cropping,
exhausted chemistry, and frequent dust marks (Nimslo prints are obviously non-retouchable).
Beneath the glossy spread of their manuals and publicity, consumer satisfaction
is under-emphasized. Although Nimslo will reprint pictures returned by the customer,
as well as negatives which were culled before printing (if the customer insists),
both of these services entail longer delay than their usual seven to 10 day
turnaround (to West Coast addresses). Slow postal service tends to fatigue consumer
efforts to obtain consistent quality service.

Connie Juggling
Christmas Citrus
(1982), by Jim Pomeroy, a print from negatives taken with the Nimslo camera;
these negatives were also printed by Nimslo as a lenticular stereophotograph.

The last paragraph raises several
important issues which, though unacknowledged by Nimsio, present major irritations
for serious users. Nimslo advertises their prints as "professional" but their
inconsistent, often poor quality work and sluggish response undermines working
photographers dependent upon their services. Not only is the camera functionally
limited and processing expensive, slow, and erratic, but Nimslo also intervenes
directly in production of prints. They will not print negatives of "questionable"
content; they will not print compositions they can't easily decipher; and they
will not print images where the camera is tilted off the horizontal (poor Rodchenko!).
In addition, each set of returned negatives and prints contains a brochure re-instructing
users on proper loading, shooting, etc. Do frustrated professionals really need
re-instructing in the limitations a remote corporation chooses to impose on
its customers?

Excerpts from two
instruction brochures for Nimslo customers, returned with processed print
and negatives

Under different circumstances these
would not be serious problems. Usually competition would tend to lower prices
and increase quality through marketing incentives, and the public could deal
with other, less intrusive labs. But, pivotally, Nimslo controls the only access
to processing of prints exposed in their cameras. This technology is not available
to individuals. You cannot develop lenticular stereo prints in your personal
darkroom, and you cannot order this work from your local, competent, trustworthy
custom lab either. Nims and Lo have conceived and marketed a system which creates
virtual bondage. This was confirmed in a pre-release press conference reported
in Industrial Photography., "Steve Bostic (... executive director of Nimslo)
explained that the camera is like a 'razor to a razor blade company.' Profits
will come mostly from printing."13 In effect, Nimslo Corporation becomes an
unwelcome collaborator in the production of every image exposed and printed
through their process.

Three
single frames from stereo photographs made with a Nimslo camera. Left:
Portrait of the Artist as a Wet Bather (1983), by Connie Hatch,
a well exposed image printed from a color negative which Nimslo returned
without printing. Middle: Mission Street, San Francisco (1983),
by Jim Pomeroy, an example of a composition which violates Nimslo's rules
for proper camera angles. This photograph, and right: Liberty Lunch
(1983) by Jim Pomeroy, were made from black and white transparencies,
a process anavailable from Nimslo.

This idea is not new, but the state
of photography has changed somewhat since the apocryphal days of George Eastman
and Kodak #1. The camera buying population is educated, relatively affluent,
and sophisticated; viable alternatives are abundant. What strategies are necessary
then, "to garner 4% of the world's $19 billion photography market by 1985"?14
Nims and Lo see their commercial advantage as historical necessity. In their
words,

Man has been making images
since prehistoric times, and it seems to us that if we survey the broad sweep
of image-making history, we can see a commitment to increasing naturalism.

The ancient Egyptians,
with their diagrammatic renderings, painted what they knew, not what they
saw, while the Greeks of the third and fourth centuries [B.C.] clearly intended
their sculptures to be more life-like. Through medieval times, painters explored
movement and color, and with the Renaissance came a major breakthrough in
visual realism with new techniques for rendering perspective. The lmpressionists--whose
first exhibition was held in a photographer's studio--proclaimed that their
methods allowed them to paint with "scientific accuracy." Again, they were
claiming an increased realism.

This humble ethnocentric gloss is
developed further on:

The search for the realistic
portrayal of the world in color and the search for three-dimensional imagery
are both almost as old as photography itself. However, the quest to record
the world as we physiologically and psychologically perceive it as only one
of the factors we must consider. Equally and sometimes more important are
such factors as convenience, cost and what we call "degree of personalization."

These terms are clarified in another
paragraph:

Convenience is a major
factor in the widespread acceptance of any visual medium. For example, people
normally prefer color prints made from negatives, though these may often be
markedly inferior in quality and more expensive than color slides taken with
the same camera! Most people simply don't find transparencies convenient to
view. Convenience is also a selling factor with self-developing print systems.
No wonder, then, that the complications of taking, mounting and--particularly--viewing
stereo images (according to the system used) were felt to compare unfavorably
with the convenience of viewing a flat print.

The degree of personalization
has also been a major factor in the acceptance of various image-making systems.
It is highly significant that, for example, most people prefer to take their
own photos of, say, Disneyland rather than purchase the commercially available--and
cheaper--high quality postcards and slides. People want to record what they
saw, their experience, not buy someone else's. This is even more the case
when it is possible to pose a member of one's own family or a close friend
in the scene. The Victorian stereo boom was largely based on commercially-produced
views. George Eastman left that industry at the gate when he personalized
photography--"You take the picture" (personalization), "We do the rest" (convenience).

And "some final thoughts":

We are convinced that
we have not only technological advances which make three-dimensional photography
a practical proposition for the first time, but also that the three-dimensional
image produced represents a visual breakthrough taking us another step closer
to the real world. 15

These arguments nicely sidestep the
important problems posed by Braden in regard to Eastman-simplification at the
expense of education (convenience?) and placement of self into ideological fantasy
(personalization?). Both terms express a position of passive complacency within
a framework of manipulative condescension. By limiting personal access to significant
steps in the creative, editorial, and selective processes, Nimslo encourages
mediocrity. Further, their enforced control of the production cycle limits application,
quality, experimentation, and autonomy, to say nothing of privacy and author's
privilege of first viewing.

It is worth noting that among Nims's
favorite charities are right-wing religious publications advocating the increased
presence of "Christians" in government." In this light, corporate monitoring
of personal production and magnanimous control take on an ominous tone. My feelings
of consumer's rights and First Amendment protection are rattled when I read
Jerry Nims quoted in Billy Graham's church organ, Christianity Today:

"For example," he says,
"child pornography is an abomination. We should pray for the child pornographer,
but we should also enter into society and try to remove the destructive opportunity
he has under the guise of freedom of speech." In addition, Nims asserts he
would not hesitate to break a law of society it he knew he had to keep God's
law.17

Arguably, child pornography is
an abomination, but warping principles of freedom of speech to conform to narrow,
fundamentalist strictures is unsettling.

Does this include work submitted
by Nimslo's customers to their secretive processing? God knows! But I am increasingly
disinclined to expose my work to this scrutiny. If Eastman's inventions democratized
photography, Nimslo's contribution sanitizes it. You are allowed to see your
own work only after it has been carefully packaged and inspected for you--at
your own considerable expense.

What's wrong with this? It's a free
country. Why doesn't the customer simply move on to a better product, better
service? If this is a problem, won't business take its course and leave the
inflexible, insensitive entrepreneur patronless? It might if there were alternatives.
Unfortunately, Nimslo is the only affordable, accessible stereoscopic camera
in current production--the only game in town. It's exasperating that, aside
from the novelty value of 3-D snapshots, stereoscopic photography has countless
applications in graphic, scientific, medical, and sundry fields (brain scans,
aerial surveys, computer visualizations, etc.) as prints, projections, or cinema.
The fact that a corporate entity would raise over $47-million to develop a full
system which prohibits such utility implies incredible arrogance. It's a cold
position of smug superiority, doling out services and options along with carefully
calculating balances of taste, need, and economic tolerance. Unlike computers,
stereo photography is an old science with known applications and potential.
These are not well-served in this case, and Nimslo's posture reveals a strong
scent of hubris.

With an advertising budget of $25-million,
Nimsto Corporation lost $18-million in 1982 (ostensibly, wildcat strikes in
Scotland severely reduced expected production, and dealers were not able to
meet the need generated by the massive publicity). The original campaign was
dropped, possibly because "many felt ['Behold the Miracle'] overstated the offerings
of 3-D."18 This was an expensive miscalculation. The shortsightedness of their
design and marketing has also been characteristic of their investigations of
potential application and consequent benefits. While advertising comprised a
huge portion of their corporate resources, apparently very little funding went
towards subsidies of experimental work by experienced outside professionals--a
practice formerly employed by Polaroid which entails relatively cheap risks
while providing good public relations, informed feedback into nuances of system
designs, as well as good reproducible showpieces. Nimslo's only effort thus
far, an exhibition organized through Castelli Graphics in New York City (April
12-May 24, 1983) featured work by 83 artists. Each artist was briefly loaned
a camera, provided by Nimslo and distributed through Castelli. Nimslo covered
processing costs, and each participant selected an image for 8x10 inch reproduction
for the show. While the exhibition generated some interest as a media event,
it was a critical flop, 19 possibly because few photographers had enough time
with the equipment to actually move beyond initial experiments. Similar exhibitions,
roughly based on the same scheme, are being planned at private galleries in
other regions of the U.S. Clearly, these shows are extensions of advertising
policy rather than research grants for extended investigations. Celebrity artists
are used to attract attention, but substantial support is not offered to stimulate
serious use of what can easily become another expensive high-tech toy. Furthermore,
corporate secrecy and aloofness suggest mistrust of or disinterest in interactive
cooperation. Nimslo doesn't seem eager to share information; they never responded
to my request about policy concerning this or similar programs.

For the time being, sales are holding
and the camera is available, but success will depend on real utility and real
need, not ceremonial snaps for weddings and birthdays. If their venture fails,
which it certainly may, the multinational gamblers who financed Nimslo will
move on to new games. The real losers will be the users stranded without processing
and printing and the public deprived of a potentially useful tool, once again
jaded after utopian promises sour.

*

The greatest tragedy of stereoscopic
photography (and similar forms of extra-pictorial media--anamorphs, lantern
slides, panoramas, zoetropes, etc.--stems from the seeming dependence on ephemeral
forms of presentation; these always require some kind of intermediate emulation
of natural binocular vision (Nimslo included). Eye strain encourages disillusionment
(no pun intended). What's more, improvements are constantly introduced into
the market, quickly obsolescing extant modes. Chronic "innovation "--with very
little qualitative information handed down to subsequent generations--creates
a condition of eternal primitivism, constantly being at square one: once again
garbage in your lap but this time in living color with dolbyized six-channel
SurroundSound. This results in the failure to motivate or support intelligent,
skillful contemporary work and the isolation of such work from its historic,
social, and aesthetic associations. Our cyclical exposure to the stereoscopic
experience can be easily summed up as shock-insult-boredom-yawn-repeat.

Perhaps the diminutive scale of prints,
low-brow popular appeal, corny topicality, and collectors' indifference tend
to deride the stereograph's historical worth--valuable primarily because of
those elements. This lack of connoisseurial sanction undermines the commodity
value for commercial galleries and consequently, critics and museums generally
ignore stereo photography. Resources such as the Keystone-Mast Archive at the
California Museum of Photography at the University of California, Riverside
and studies like Edward Earle's Points of View: The Stereograph in America--A
Cultural History 20 are too few and far between the plethora of disguised
promotion motivated by scholars with conflicting roles as collectors, dealers,
curators, and critics .21 (Toot your own horn or blow the whistle. Not both
at once, please.)

The current phase of 3-D resurgence
thrusts upon us such Son-of-Stewardess screengems as Comin' At Ya!, Friday
the 13, III, and Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. More of the same
assaultive, infantile, predictably exploitative, thin, eye-straining head-and-wallet-aches
we've had thrown in our faces for 30 years. With the possible exception of Alfred
Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, there has never been a three-dimensional
feature film capable of sustained critical attention. 3-D publications likewise
stress cheap thrills, cheesecake, and horror comics. Why is our contemporary
stereoscopic output so dreadful? Perhaps the quality has something to do with
a formula which computes the greatest profit as a function of condescension
divided by the lowest common cultural denominator multiplied by the largest
possible audience, shock squared, plus a qualifying element--the cost of mounting
new technology is subtracted from the subtotal but compensated by an increment
of hype which hopefully restores the profit sum to projected levels. Quality,
content, and access are not part of the equation. In the rare instance of increased
personal access, such as Nimslo, we find other constraints which follow the
pace set by these familiar norms.

Nimslo's selective limitations on
applications puts them in a commanding position. The only possible choice is
their product--small, precious, relatively unique objects, vulnerable fugitive
prints which may only be viewed in the intimate confines of albums, galleries,
and small edition publications. Although Nimslo could make other choices available,
their decision has been to withhold them for the time being. Such options include
better cameras, integrated equipment, laboratory licensing, professional or
home processing, projection and multi-media applications, expanded emulsion
choices (black and white, high speed, infra-red, etc.), publication of relevant
technical data, and access to all areas of production. Still, it is unrealistic
to expect a monopoly to offer these options unless motivated by profits.

As a picture-making device, the Nimslo
camera is designed for ideal use at a social distance of casual encounter (5-7
feet), which nullifies the possibility of close-up scrutiny or wide-angle pictorial
depth. Confining its range to candid portraiture and product display of roughly
conversational scale, the camera denies both real intimacy and environmental
context. Deviations from these norms are penalized through inherent defects
of the system. Fixed focus and non-adjustable parallax preclude close-ups. In
pictures with dramatic differences between foreground and background, ghost
fragments of pictorial elements result which are hard to resolve in the print.
(Although Nimslo's multiplexing process allows adjustment of the perceived picture-plane
"window," these adjustments are made in the plant by a technician, not by the
photographer. Moreover, consumers are not informed of the availability of this
service.) Also, the multiplexing process and the imprecision of the 200-per-inch
cylindrical plastic lenses dulls the color and flattens the contrast of the
image as well as severely decreasing its definition. These shortcomings are
obscured by exaggerated depth, displacement, and apparent detail. The problematic
intermediate "viewer" which plagued earlier systems is possibly now less cumbersome,
but still present in the laminated lens screen. Since a much greater pictorial
spectrum--macroscopic to full-vista landscape-- was available in the nineteenth-century
stereo views and the Stereo Realist and Viewmaster formats of the 1950s, Nimslo's
solutions hardly seem to signal an uncompromised improvement.

Ironically, for committed stereo
photographers, the only pragmatic alternative to dependence upon Nimslo's restrictive
marketing strategy is the Nimslo 3-D itself. Exposures of transparency film
yield images of considerably sharper definition and tonal range than provided
by the plastic lens laminated print. If the outer images of the exposed quad
are mounted and transposed as normal stereo pairs, they work easily, fitting
well into the vast encyclopedia of stereo photographs. Since the pair fills
a normal 35mm slide frame, stereo projection is possible given the current audio-visual
technology available--i.e., dissolve, slide-tape synchronization, and multi-image
spectacle. Commercial systems for 35mm single slide stereo were manufactured
in the 1950s but have faded long ago into obscurity. Printed below is a rough
description of a projection system which can be assembled for about $10.00 material
cost. This system works well with Nimslo pairs, split-frame images from the
Asahi Pentax adapter, or copy slides of any stereo pair which fills and splits
the normal 24x35mm rectangle, including all stereopticon views. Stereo Realist
pairs can be remounted to spiit 2 1/4 frames and the system scaled up to use
standard 2 1/4 inch projectors, or they can be copied and reduced to fit the
35mm split-frame above. Similar processes can be used to adapt the Viewmaster
format as well. Prints are easily produced, either negative or reversal, as
normal pairs in classic fashion.

Plans
for single projector stereo system by Jim Pomeroy (un-readable version).
Click on image for full size plan.

Importantly, these techniques
enable presentations to large audiences as well as offset reproduction of stereo
images, either as pairs or as anaglyphs (red/blue overprints). Both are effective
extensions of communication which can link the diverse realms from historical
archives, research sources, and popular, personal, and commercial collections
through increased systems compatibility. A controlled toy which favors passive
indulgence and vanity can be converted into an effective media tool.

Rejecting and reapplying part of
Nimslo's technology is not a completely satisfactory solution; half the film
is usually wasted, and one still does not have a really fine, flexible camera.
Moreover, this ambivalently supports manipulative Corporate practices in league
with reactionary political causes. Nimslo is unlikely to change their policies,
and applications as proposed here will tend to benefit their camera sales. Since
this does tend to undermine consumer reliance upon their photofinishing business,
it is a small tradeoff, and perhaps only temporary. Unless Nimslo makes their
system more versatile and accessible, expanding their services, information,
and cameras' features, they will remain vulnerable, not only to the capricious
fashion which doomed the stereopticon and the Stereo Realist, but also to the
dynamics of competitive business which destroyed Osborne Computers. Thus far,
modern 3-D has existed as a trendy novelty, but binocular perception is a biological
given. We will seek to fabricate this illusion as long as we make images, but
on affordable terms as self-determining explorers or as respected, informed
consumers. There are other tools on the shelf and in the mail. Praise the Lord
and rock the boat.

Anticipated instances of technological
innovation may give these arguments specificity. One of several new inventions,
the magnetic still camera (Sony's Mavica, for example), with quick storage/erasure,
instant printing, monitor viewing, tele-transmission, editing, enhancement,
and computer integration is imminent. This hybrid technology (photography, xerography,
video, computers, and telecommunications) will radically affect all forms of
contemporary image-making, especially photography. Manipulation of imagery,
faster access to reproduction, distribution, and integration with other forms
and processing will radically destabilize roles, relations, hierarchies, mobility,
and organization of information (including stereoscopy). Inflexible genres with
limited application and novelty appeal will quickly become curious anachronisms,
and once again artists will be asked to choose between roles as passive proles,
hermetic artisans, or effective, independent communicators.

Stereo photography, or all photography
for that matter, does not necessarily require newer technology to make it better
or "more realistic." Art, science, literature, or social change is rarely served
by "convenience" or "personalization." But business, management, and the politics
of maintaining the status quo and corporate profits are served very well. The
potential for significant production is seriously hampered by systems which
"design out" access, exposure, reproduction, and distribution. High tech and
megabucks may provide us with new playthings but the shackles, filters, bribes,
and mindsets which come with them are undesirable and counter-productive.

The history of photography coincides
smoothly with the history of corporate capitalism. The parameters enjoined by
innovation, ownership, manufacturing, marketing, profits, easy obsolescence,
fashion, and the enticement of consumers frame illusions of free choice, mobility,
and imagination. These mechanisms are profoundly real and effectively naturalized--i.e.,
invisible. They brace the horizons of ideology and flood the atmosphere of intellect,
as we live and breathe. Here, Nimslo is just a convenient example to reveal
this impact on a level of personal engagement as we, once again, Behold
the Miracle.

15. Jerry Nims and Allen
Lo, "Nimslo System Adds A New Dimension to 3-D Photography," Industrial Photography,
August 1980, pp.20-23.

16. Francis A. Schaeffer,
A Christian Manifesto (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway Books, Good News Publishers,
published in association with Nims Communications, 1981); and Franky Schaeffer,
A Time For Anger. The Myth of Neutrality (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway Books,
Good News Publishers, produced by Nims Communications, 1982). These ideas are
potently summarized in a prefatory blurb for Schaeffer's A Christian Manifesto:

A Christian Manifesto
is literally a call for Christians to change the course of history--by returning
to biblical Truth and by allowing Christ to be Lord of all life. To do this,
Schaeffer says, will involve a head-on confrontation with the false view that
material or energy, shaped by chance, is the final reality.

Schaeffer's provocative
conclusion is that when the state directly defies the absolute law of God,
its authority becomes illegitimate. In this case, the Christian is bound to
resist the state by whatever means necessary--through direct legal and political
action, and possibly through massive demonstrations of civil disobedience.

Correlary tenets are amplified
in the companion volume by Schaeffer's son Franky, in A Time For Anger: The
Myth of Neutrality:

We are not to seek the
approval of men or fear the ridicule of a short-sighted secularist world.
In the end, it is God we must fear and Him we must obey. To obey the bureaucracies,
the courts, the whims and social trends of a humanist culture, even the debate
and edicts of co-opted theologians, is to forsake obedience to the One to
whom ultimate obedience is due (p. 153).

Ours has been a religion
of faith without deeds for too long. It is time that mighty deeds be done
again. Truth equals confrontation (p. 154).

Since this article was
published in 1984 Nimslo DID go out of business. 3-Dx
will process the Nimslo film. Other lenticular systems using a three lenses
have been introduced but have not become very popular. In fact, 3d-it,
the producer of 3 lens cameras an film processor went out of business on 3/31/99.

Jim's predictions about
digital photography have, of course, come true. The "web" hadn't been invented
in 1984, but now personal 3D is published everywhere. (See the 3d Stereo Web
Ring). For links to other 3d stereo related sites see the 3D Yellow Pages!
Matsushita (Panasonic) has developed a digital printer that can produce lenticular
3D images from multiple images. This printer is not available in the U.S.
at this time, but is being used in Japan in coin operated novelty booths.